The OFFIS Institute in Oldenburg concentrates its research activities in six R&D divisions which all focus on different scientific communities. To merge these activities, an internal project was created. The topic of this project is “Intelligentes Leben, Wohnen und Arbeiten im Alter” or “Smart assisted living and working for the elderly”. The topic was chosen based on studies about changes in technology and society in the next 20 years. These studies predict an accelerated aging of the European society and indicate the associatedly arising problems.
The vision of the project is to enable the living of elderly people in their familiar homes supported by smart technology. This technology should be unobtrusive and easily to operate by the user.
Up to now exist a lot of solutions for smart homes, but - as they all were developed by engineers and technical enthusiasts – none solve the problem of the target group “elderly people”. A loss of acceptance in smart home solutions is the consequence.
The research within the project always has the different needs and abilities of elderly people in mind. For this purpose a test bed for smart home technology was created. This test bed is an apartment equipped with home automation components like sensors, actuators and communication systems from different manufacturers.
The lack of standardized communication protocols for home automation leads to another component what is always needed if systems from different manufacturers work together – it is a gateway for a unified user interface.
Together with elderly people from Oldenburg these components and new developed ones are tested for their practical use. For example the smart carpet which detects the fall or the smart medical cabinet that reminds you to take your pills.
GAZETTE 
